\nBy In 79 fabulous years, she looked death in the eye countless times and lived to tell the tale. But yesterday, after a life as dramatic as any movie script, Elizabeth Taylor’s battle was over. She died of heart failure in hospital, with her four children at her side. And when the New York Times paid tribute to Hollywood’s last movie goddess, it had to admit that Miss Taylor had actually outlived the obituary writer by six years. The Oscar-winning actress spent the final six weeks of her life at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. She had been admitted after her weight plummeted to less than 98lb and the heart failure diagnosed in 2004 threatened to overwhelm her. <\/span><\/p>\n Mesmerising: Elizabeth Taylor, pictured here on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer, has died aged 79<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A friend described her as ‘tiny and fighting for every breath’ and added: ‘She still felt she had so much to live for. ‘But she was happy with her life at the end. She was happy with her family. She was at peace.’ Miss Taylor’s publicist said she died peacefully, watched over by the children from three of her seven husbands \u2013 Michael and Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd and Maria Burton.<\/span><\/p>\n ‘My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour and love,’ said Michael, 57. ‘We know, quite simply, the world is a better place for Mum having lived in it.’ He said the family, which includes ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, were ‘incredibly proud’ of her ‘remarkable body of work in film, her success as a businesswoman, and her brave advocacy in the fight against HIV\/Aids’. A private family funeral is expected to be held this week. Miss Taylor’s family is expected to share much of her \u00a3360 million fortune although friends say she is leaving some of it to her Aids charity. They may also benefit from the proceeds of handwritten diaries she had reportedly discussed publishing. Never one to miss a party, she had celebrated her 79th birthday with family and friends a month early as she had to go into hospital ten days later. She had asked fans to pray for her as she faced her latest health hurdle. One of her last\u00a0 Twitter messages read simply: ‘I’ll let you know when it is all over. Love you, Elizabeth.’<\/span><\/p>\n Miss Taylor had been plagued by health problems all her life. She estimated she had almost died four times.<\/span><\/p>\n In one of her last interviews she said her first memory was of ‘pain’.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n She was born with scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, and suffered back problems which were partly to blame for her subsequent addiction to painkillers and alcohol. But she never gave up. She had both hips replaced and beat skin cancer,a brain tumour, diabetes, seizures and a stroke. She endured an estimated 70 illnesses and had 100 operations, 20 of them major surgery. A child star who managed to make the transition to adult roles, she won two Oscars \u2013 for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? However, her 50-strong list of film credits tends to be overshadowed by her list of\u00a0 seven husbands, most notably Richard Burton, whom she married and divorced twice. In 2000, she was thrilled to become Dame Elizabeth Taylor in recognition of her services to film. She once described herself as a ‘living example of what people can go through and survive’.<\/span><\/p>\n By Philip Norman<\/span><\/p>\n Iconic: Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton in Cleoptra. He was the love of her life and she was to marry him twice<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The time was 2am and the voice of Elizabeth Taylor rang around the hotel lobby in Salzburg, Austria, as brimful of hellcat fury as any tempestuous heroine she had ever played on screen.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Richard!\u2019 she screamed at her fifth husband, Richard Burton. \u2018Will you stop drinking and come to bed this minute! Your voice is ricocheting all over this hotel.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n It was a snowy night in 1968, and Taylor, acknowledged to be the world\u2019s most beautiful woman, hardly looked the part at that moment. Her hair was a tangled mess, her Cleopatra-style eye make-up had gone smudgy. She wore a tatty black leather coat over a tarty red chiffon nightdress, and was barefoot.<\/span><\/p>\n Burton still wore a Nazi officer\u2019s uniform for his role in the Alistair MacLean war story Where Eagles Dare. After the day\u2019s filming, he had stayed up drinking vintage brandy with companions, including me, while Taylor had retired to bed. To complete the drama of her reappearance, Burton was being threatened with a handgun by a pushy expat American he\u2019d just told to get lost. The gunman now looked on, as dumbfounded and dazzled as the rest of us.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Either you come up now,\u2019 Taylor hissed at Burton, \u2018or don\u2019t bother to, ever again.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Aah, get away,\u2019 snarled Burton, reaching for the brandy bottle.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Get away yourself,\u2019 Taylor hissed. And, clutching her leather coat more tightly around her, she stomped back to their suite on her own.<\/span><\/p>\n Next morning on location, however, all was sweetness and light again. Taylor called Burton \u2018Boofy\u2019, he called her \u2018Ocean\u2019, and between takes they canoodled like lovestruck teenagers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018My dear, you light up the set,\u2019 the film director gushed at Taylor.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018She also lights up my heart,\u2019 Burton said gallantly.<\/span><\/p>\n As an unworldly 24-year-old, I spent several days with the couple, learning more about Taylor, both as an actress and a person, than most of her obituaries can tell.<\/span><\/p>\n Determined: Taylor in National Velvet (1944). At 10, she set her heart on the lead role but was told she was too short. After weeks of punishing exercise and a weight-gaining diet, she convinced the director she’d gained three inches in height – and got the part<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For a magazine profile I started out researching for someone else but ended up writing, I also talked to her parents, Francis and Sara, her closest friends, such as the actor Roddy McDowall, her lawyer and a series of directors and old-time Hollywood moguls, some of whom adored her and some who most definitely did not.<\/span><\/p>\n Being with her on such intimate terms has left an indelible memory. There was, for instance, the moment at dinner in Salzburg when she turned and fixed me with those amazing violet eyes, whose double row of black lashes never needed enhancement by any mascara brush.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As she smiled at me, I felt suddenly robbed of breath, as if my Adam\u2019s apple had become double its usual size. A moment later, she was regaling the table with a bawdy story about the producer Daryl F. Zanuck.<\/span><\/p>\n Taylor was a star of the hugest magnitude; the greatest Hollywood name ever to come out of Britain; a sexual icon to rival Garbo or Monroe. But throughout the craziest fantasies and excesses of her career, she remained always primarily a creature of flesh and hot, hot blood – not a silver planet twinkling coldly in the firmament, but a down-to-earth and earthy woman.<\/span><\/p>\n She was the last of the great movie goddesses, thrilling and intriguing the pre-rock star, pre-TV soap world of the Fifties and Sixties with a love life and lifestyle that any Hollywood story-editor would have rejected as impossibly far-fetched.<\/span><\/p>\n Luminous: Elizabeth Taylor as a girl in 1934 (left) and already a child star in the film National Velvet in 1944<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even in these celebrity-overdosed She was born – to American parents Even as a tiny tot, Elizabeth had an On the outbreak of war in 1939, her Sara, a \u2018stage mother\u2019 of the Taylor\u2019s drive to succeed was the After several weeks of punishing Short-lived romance: In 1950, aged 18, she married Nicky Hilton, a deceptively charming young man whose father, Conrad, founded the Hilton hotel-chain. Nicky was an abusive drunk who battered his young bride so brutally, she lost the baby she was carrying<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Child stars then seldom made a At 18, she married Nicky Hilton, a The smiling charmer proved to be an Divorcing Hilton, Elizabeth rebounded In 1957, she dumped Wilding for the Todd was Taylor\u2019s ideal man – powerful, protective and irresistibly masculine.<\/span><\/p>\n He adored her in the uncomplicated In March 1958, Todd took off on a business trip aboard the private aircraft he had named \u2018The Lucky Liz\u2019 in his wife\u2019s honour. <\/span><\/p>\n Before he left, he couldn\u2019t stop kissing her goodbye. \u2018I\u2019m afraid something\u2019s going to happen,\u2019 he told her. \u2018I\u2019m too happy.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Scorching: Taylor smouldered on screen including in the 1958 classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Legends: Taylor with Richard Burton on their first wedding day in 1964. He was to be her fifth and sixth husband<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That night, en route for Kansas City, The Lucky Liz crashed in flames, killing Todd and everyone aboard.<\/span><\/p>\n Taylor was traumatised by his loss On screen, she was Hollywood\u2019s Her portrayal of the sexually But she also proved herself an In May 1959 she married her fourth A year later, Taylor was filming Cast as Mark Antony, the Egyptian Much married: Taylor arrives at London Airport with her fourth husband, singer Eddie Fisher, and her sons Michael, six, and Christopher, four, children of her former marriage to Michael Wilding<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Taylor and Burton\u2019s first scene Their public love affair caused a Married in 1964, \u2018the Burtons\u2019 as In 1966, they played warring husband Their extravagance was like nothing Longevity: Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Zee and Co in 1972 in which she played opposite Micahel Caine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Taylor seemed to commit herself But the grand passion was sabotaged Having turned their marriage into a Marriage number seven was to John No longer in demand in Hollywood, her Warner and Taylor were divorced in The 52-year-old Hollywood matriarch Always a prey to dramatic illnesses Friendship: The actress had a very close relationship with the late Michael Jackson. They are seen here at Liza Minnelli’s wedding to David Gest in New York, 2002<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1988, while drying out at the The relationship between former He was eventually dismissed with a Honour: Taylor was made a Dame at Buckingham Palace in 2000<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So why did Taylor keeping marrying In 1997, a year after her divorce A range of perfumes marketed in her In 2000, she paid her first visit to \u2018A Dame?\u2019 she echoed to one interviewer in amazement. \u2018I didn\u2019t think I was the kind of person that happened to.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Close: Elizabeth Taylor holds the hand of her good friend Jason Winters in 2007. She was said to be contemplating a ninth wedding with the LA property developer, 28 years her junior<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thereafter, she became increasingly The years may have been remorselessly A disaffected landscape gardener who To refute claims that her formidable As a further sock in the eye to Burton remained the love of her life, Indeed, it was as one half of the I often think back to having dinner with the two of them in Salzberg in 1968, how kind they were to a young journalist and the moment Taylor\u2019s amazing violet eyes turned directly on me.<\/span><\/p>\n Even that 43-year-old memory still takes my breath away.<\/span><\/p>\n Frail: Taylor attends the annual a benefit in Santa Monica in 2009. Her health had been poor for years<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nTom Leonard<\/a>
Last updated at 2:08 AM on 24th March 2011<\/p>\n
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\ntimes, with a new glamour icon rocketing to fame every other minute,
\nTaylor\u2019s eight marriages, her jewels, spending-sprees, tantrums and epic
\nillnesses remain the stuff of imperishable legend.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nliving in Britain – in 1932 in Hampstead, North London, on a modest
\nstreet not far from where I live now. Her mother, Sara, had been a minor
\nstage actress; her tall, handsome father, Francis, was an art dealer.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nunsettling, exotic beauty, almost as though the head of a mature woman
\nhad been grafted onto the body of a child.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfather moved his art dealership to Beverly Hills, California, starting a
\ngallery whose clients came to include actor Edward G. Robinson and
\nwriter-director Billy Wilder.<\/span><\/p>\n
\npushiest kind, steered her violet-eyed \u00aclittle girl into a contract with
\nMGM studios, whose patriarchal boss, Louis B. Mayer, boasted owning
\n\u2018more stars than there are in Heaven\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nequal of her mother\u2019s. After a taste of fame in Lassie Come Home aged
\nten, 12-year-old Elizabeth set her heart on the lead role in National
\nVelvet, a romance with a horse racing background, but was told she was
\ntoo short for the role.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nexercise and weight-gaining diet, she went back to the director and
\nmanaged to persuade him she\u2019d gained three inches in height.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"At](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/36adee25753_636x450.jpg.jpg\")
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\ncomfortable transition to adult roles \u2014 witness Shirley Temple \u2014 but
\nTaylor managed it effortlessly. With her virginal beauty went a
\nvoluptuous figure that initially worried the self-censoring movie
\nbosses. Officials known as B.I.s (bust-inspectors) patrolled her sets,
\nordering higher-cut dresses if too much cleavage was visible.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngood-looking and deceptively charming young man whose father, Conrad,
\nhad founded the Hilton hotel group.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nabusive drunk who battered his young bride so brutally that she lost the
\nbaby she had been carrying.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninto the arms of British actor Michael Wilding, a man 20 years her
\nsenior. The five-year marriage produced two sons, Michael and
\nChristopher, but, as Taylor herself admitted, it was more brother-sister
\nrelationship than love match.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAmerican producer Mike Todd, a stocky, swashbuckling figure then
\npreparing to launch his epic screen version of Jules Verne\u2019s Around The
\nWorld In 80 Days. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nway she craved, treating her like bone china, showering her with jewels
\nand furs, telephoning her every day no matter where in the world he was.
\nTogether they had a daughter, Liza, although complications during the
\nbirth required Taylor to undergo surgery to prevent any further
\npregnancies.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Scorching:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0951e500323_634x373.jpg.jpg\")
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\nfor years afterwards. Painkillers and drugs, which she\u2019d begun using as a
\nchild star, were her only means of assuaging the pain, along with
\nalcohol.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nnearest answer to smouldering European movie goddesses such as Gina
\nLollobrigida and Sophia Loren. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nyearning Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams\u2019s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
\nand of Gloria Wandrous in Butterfield 8 (for which she won her first
\nOscar in 1960) fuelled the fantasies of men the world over.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nactress of extraordinary depth and range, notably in Giant \u2014 a Texan
\nepic presaging TV\u2019s Dallas \u2014 in which she co-starred with heart-throb
\nJames Dean.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhusband, the crooner Eddie Fisher, who had been best man at her wedding
\nto Todd. The pair had caused a scandal when Fisher left his then wife
\nDebbie Reynolds for Elizabeth.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nCleopatra, a historical epic so long-drawn-out and horrendously
\nexpensive that it would come near to bankrupting its producers. She was
\npaid a then record-breaking $1m for her role.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nqueen\u2019s Roman lover, was Welsh actor Richard Burton, until then better
\nknown on the stage than the vulgar screen.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Much](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/20da2d16900_634x840.jpg.jpg\")
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\ntogether in Cleopatra produced instant, fizzing sexual chemistry. They
\nheld their first screen kiss for so long that the director called out
\nsarcastically: \u2018I\u2019m sorry to interrupt you two… but it\u2019s time for
\nlunch.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n
\nscandal since Taylor was still married to Eddie Fisher and Burton to his
\nwell-known and popular first wife, Sybil. The then Pope even took a
\nhand, castigating Taylor for stealing another woman\u2019s husband.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthey became known, created a dazzling screen and stage partnership,
\nappearing together in Shakespeare\u2019s The Taming Of The Shrew and Marlow\u2019s
\nDr Faustus. Unable to have children of their own, the couple adopted a
\nlittle girl named Maria from a Munich orphanage. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nand wife in Edward Albee\u2019s Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which
\nTaylor won a second Oscar.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe post-war world had seen before. Burton bought Taylor the world\u2019s
\nlargest diamond for a then staggering \u00a31.1 million, as well as other
\njewels, furs, old masters and a luxury yacht. I was once shown over the
\nyacht, and invited to experience the sensation of rolling on the
\nBurtons\u2019 circular bed.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Longevity:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/6244ff55968_634x588.jpg.jpg\")
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\nwholeheartedly to Burton, even learning Welsh (which she would use to
\nswear at him during their rows) and valiantly trying to curb her natural
\nchaotic untidiness. When I met her parents, they told me in amazement
\nhow, since meeting Burton, she\u2019d got into the habit of emptying
\nashtrays.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nby drink and by Burton\u2019s growing bitterness at having compromised his
\ntalent by accepting second-rate film roles, as he thought, to keep
\nTaylor in the luxury she demanded. As disenchantment grew, his pet name
\nfor her changed from \u2018Ocean\u2019 to \u2018Tubby\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nreal-life Edward Albee hell, they divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975
\nbut parted for good a year later. Burton died in 1984 from a brain
\nhaemorrhage.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWarner, a rather dull American politician then seeking election to the
\nSenate. Taylor threw herself into the role of Washington wife, even
\nselling the diamond Richard Burton had given her to fund Warner\u2019s
\nelection campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nweight ballooned alarmingly. Seeing the cruel photographs of her with
\nWarner in the late Seventies, I remembered her father\u2019s innocent
\nobservation \u2014 long before anyone knew about \u2018eating disorders\u2019 \u2014 that
\nshe would routinely eat five hot dogs with bacon, one after another.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n1982, and two years later came the strangest attachment of all when she
\nbegan a friendship with Michael Jackson, then the world\u2019s most famous
\nand most bizarre rock megastar.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand the 26-year-old, white-gloved moonwalker were reportedly trembling
\non the brink of matrimony. Taylor insisted that, for all his fixations
\non childhood and his obsessive facial restructuring, Jackson was the
\nmost \u2018normal\u2019 person she\u2019d ever met. This even though Jackson at one
\npoint considered altering his appearance yet again to become a living
\nreplica of Taylor as a young girl in her 1944 film National Velvet.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand accidents, she suffered grievous ill health as the years advanced,
\nalmost dying from viral pneumonia in 1990 and developing chronic
\nosteo-arthritis that necessitated two hip operations and left her more
\nthan ever reliant on painkilling drugs and alcohol.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Friendship:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/24b3ea5d965_634x679.jpg.jpg\")
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\nBetty Ford Clinic, she lost her heart again, to a construction worker
\nnamed Larry Fortensky, 21 years her junior, who was tackling his own
\nalcoholism. They married in 1991 at Michael Jackson\u2019s Neverland ranch,
\nwith ex-presidents Reagan and Ford among the guests and Jackson picking
\nup the $1 million tab. As a thank you, Taylor bought the singer an
\nelephant named Gipsy.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngoddess and her \u2018bit of rough\u2019 lasted a surprising eight years, although
\nfor most of that time Fortensky looked more like Taylor\u2019s bodyguard
\nthan her husband.<\/span><\/p>\n
\npay-off of \u00a31.3m and returned to his job as a construction worker with,
\ndoubtless, a few stories to tell the other lads on site.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Honour:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/f2b40071831_306x490.jpg.jpg\")
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\nuntil eventually scoring higher than Henry VIII? Her old friend Roddy
\nMcDowall thought it pointed to a deeply old-fashioned nature. \u2018When
\nElizabeth falls for someone, she doesn\u2019t just fall into bed with them,\u2019
\nMcDowall told me. \u2018She has to make it legitimate.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfrom Fortensky, Taylor underwent a successful operation on a benign
\nbrain tumour, emerging with her once-luxuriant dark curly hair now
\nclose-cropped and white. Her movie and TV career behind her (except for
\noccasional forays like voicing baby Maggie in The Simpsons cartoon), she
\nno longer needed a Mike Todd or Burton to buy her diamond.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nname had boosted a fortune then estimated at \u00a3100m. She became a
\ntireless campaigner for Aids awareness and, by her own gutsy refusal to
\ngo under, despite her mounting health problems, a symbol of courage for
\nwomen everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nher homeland for many years to be invested as a Dame by the Queen and be
\nhonoured by the UK film industry. Though often confined to a
\nwheelchair, she still managed to look spectacular and seem as
\ndown-to-earth as ever (despite having sent an advance demand that her
\nDorchester Hotel suite be repainted violet to match her eyes).<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Elizabeth](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/af64a08e496_636x731.jpg.jpg\")
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\nfrail and wheelchair-bound, and behind the lavender-drenched walls of
\nher Bel Air mansion, she came increasingly to resemble Norma Desmond,
\nSunset Boulevard\u2019s has-been screen goddess. Indeed, Desmond\u2019s great
\nsnarl of defiance in the movie could equally have been written for
\nTaylor. \u2018I\u2019m still big. It\u2019s the pictures that got small.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n
\nadvancing, but her famous sexual magnetism still flickered fitfully.
\nShe was even said to be contemplating a ninth wedding, this time to an
\nLA property developer named Jason Winters, 28 years her junior.<\/span>\tHandle\t<\/p>\n
\nleft her employment also claimed she had demanded sex from her bisexual
\nFrench butler, who was wont to refer to her disparagingly as \u2018the old
\ntrampoline\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nlist of ailments now included Alzheimer\u2019s disease, she appeared on Larry
\nKing\u2019s TV talk show in 2006, dressed in a lime green and purple kaftan
\nand sporting, as she liked to say, \u2018more bling than J-Lo\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwould-be obituaritists, she flew to Hawaii and had herself winched into
\nthe water in a cage to enjoy the experience of swimming with sharks.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nrun a close second by Mike Todd. She often spoke of being buried near
\nBurton\u2019s childhood home in South Wales even though the actor\u2019s grave is
\nactually in Switzerland, where he died in 1984.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nworld\u2019s most glamorous double act, Burton and Taylor – or Antony and
\nCleopatra – that she was at her most beautiful, most spectacularly
\nimpossible and professionally brilliant.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Frail:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0e16ebdc644_634x621.jpg.jpg\")
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